


What's Past is Prologue

by mynameisnemo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Addiction recovery, Character Study, Dancing, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Eyepocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:34:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24971629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynameisnemo/pseuds/mynameisnemo
Summary: The thing is.The thing is that Francis had done it.They had beaten the odds.  Kicked the habit.  They hadn't stopped being an addict per se but they had been recovered.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	What's Past is Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Two fics in two days. TMA has officially taken up residence in my brain. Thanks to [Ananeiah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ananeiah) once again for the spellcheck and story help and for listening to my frustrated rambling.

The thing is.

The thing is that Francis had done it. 

They had beaten the odds. Kicked the habit. They hadn't stopped being an addict per se but they had been recovered. 

They had been through the trauma of watching a friend OD. Picking up the needle again and finding themself unable to catch the plunger with their thumb because their hand was shaking too bad. Not because of withdrawal but because of fear. 

The fear that flashes in front of their eyes that next time it wouldn't be a friend. It wouldn't be another of the illegal tenants of the flophouse they frequented as a known place to get high, like Chaz or Zee or Mickey. That this time it would be them, seizing on a dirty mattress on the dirty floor of a dirty broken down house owned by a dirty old broken down man who was crazy from the drugs and told stories about being friends with the king of Saudi Arabia. That this time it would be them that was foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolled back into their head while a few people looked on in muted mild concern while the telly droned on in the background and maybe this time no one would be lucid enough to call 999 for them the way they had. 

Not that it had made a difference. 

Not that they had been able to save their friend. 

OD and DOA. 

Francis has too many acronyms in their life already. They don't want to be defined by anymore.

So they had put the needle down. Someone else would find it, someone desperate. Someone who could stick it in their arm and not have the image of their friend overdosing in front of them when they tried to push the plunger down.

They had gone to sleep on the dingy mattress instead and woken a day later, hot and cold all over and feeling like there were tiny spiders running up and down their skin. But the needle was gone and the only thing left was to rummage through their rucksack and find the wrinkled scrap of paper they had saved the last time they had done a clean needle pickup from the pharmacy on the high street. 

They tried to call the number but their phone had been out of minutes again so they took it down to the sitting room to Marcie. Marcie had been a nurse...was a nurse? Either way she wasn't too high just then and was able to lend Francis her phone to make the call. Even offered to walk them to the clinic though Francis declined, making their own path down the pavement alone, only the weight of their rucksack for company.

It had been a long journey from there, health checks and medications and meetings. A short hospitalisation while they sweated and shivered and moaned through withdrawal. Waking up to mum holding their hand and crying while their dad sat in the corner of the room and scowled before he got up and left with a mutter.

The fight about moving back home, home where they had a support network, except it came with regular church attendance and knowing that every one knew that _Francis is...well. Francis is different. You know._

Where trying to find an NA meeting without half the people there knowing their parents would be impossible. _Oh hullo, Francis. I just saw your mum down the shop yesterday, she said you might come today._ No chance of anonymity in a small town. No chance of starting over, of just being Francis. 

Whoever that was now.

So they had fought the fight and stayed in London. Taken the 200 quid their mum had sneaked to them while their dad was out having a smoke and growling down his mobile about something to do with business. They had smiled and waved and said they would be alright as their parents left. 

_I'll keep in touch this time. I promise._

And then they had left the hospital and found a place in a shelter and an outreach program and a work placement program and a housing scheme. They had eked out a life between meetings and trainings and check-ins and phone calls home to a distant past they felt like it belonged to someone else. They had put in real work, seeing a counselor and taking everything one day at a time. 

They had gotten a job on work placement, shelving overnights in a Boots. It wasn't ideal, knowing that all those pills and needles were just there behind a pulldown white grate, only a little padlock protecting the barrier between temptation and giving in. The type of padlock that Francis knew was easily enough dealt with given a crowbar and appropriate leverage. 

They had turned that leverage inward instead. Levering the door on that life just a little more closed each day. Envisioning padlocks all down the side of it, catching them closed and then throwing away the key with each box of tampons or bag of crisps that they placed just so on the shelves. 

They had tried to stop smoking, determined to be free of all the outside holds on their body before realising that to do that they would have to quit drinking as well. They had said goodbye to nights out in pubs, to having a social life, to not being given odd looks because of antisocial behaviour. 

But it was worth it the day they danced again, an entire routine from start to stop, and only slightly out of breath. It wasn't as good as they had been able to do when they were six, but they figured that they weren't even six months yet in this new life and with practice perhaps they would improve. 

And even if not it was worth it to feel sore from muscles worked by lifting boxes, stretching, rising up on their tiptoes to become one with their own body and mind and then music. Much better than cramps of withdrawal and a mind all consumed by addiction and the next hit, the next escape.

It had been clear that day. The day the world ended. 

A rare warm sunny day in London and Francis had been going home from a nightshift, passing near the community theater where they had been considering stopping by for an open try out sometime. The building advertised all types of events, theater, dance, even puppet shows. But maybe not just yet. They weren't sure about their skills, if the pressure of putting on a show would be too much this early in their recovery.

But it was warm, and sunny, and there were plenty of days ahead and they were going home to the room in the flat they had recently started renting in the north side of London. They had been thinking about stopping off at the Tesco and picking up some sandwiches and strawberries and cream and seeing if Marta or Adita or Jathan wanted to go to the park for an early picnic. Francis was the new flatmate, and while they knew there was a little rainbow flag stuck in a flower pot on the terrace and a bi pride flag on Jathan's bedroom door, and that they had agreed to abide to very strict rules about drug and alcohol consumption while living there, they weren't friends yet. It was a safe space but not a comfortable one but perhaps they could tempt one or two or three of them out to relax in the sun and forget about their cares for an hour or so. 

But while they had been lost in the calculation of wages and rent and splurging and maybe, possibly, something like friendship, the clouds had rolled in. 

There had been an American once, in the flop house. Francis had never known how she had come to be lost in the hazy underbelly of London but she had somehow. They didn't remember her name, something generic like Brittany or Sarah or Crystal. Something unremarkable and they wouldn't have even remembered except that she had complained once, her hands busy grinding and picking seeds, that British rain wasn't anything like a good southern thunderstorm in the summer. She had gone on and on about watching the storms roll in on the coast, how the lightning struck in the distance from low heavy clouds and the air would get hot and heavy and sticky before it finally broke. How sometimes the sky would turn green and you knew it was time to take shelter before the finger of god came down to point at you. She had laughed then, punctuating it with putting a lighter flame to the rolled paper end of the joint and then lying back with a satisfied sigh. Talking about how the end wouldn't end in fire or ice but a flood, rain and dirt mixing together into a muddy cleansing of the world. 

Francis had left her then, didn't know what had happened to her except that she had disappeared from the flat shortly after. Only the memory of that strange conversation lingering to pop up in odd moments like this. But they couldn't leave this sudden storm now, this storm that hadn't been predicted, that was contrary to the dire warnings of drought the beeb had been predicting for days on end now. 

The wind was harsh, at once dry like desert storms and biting like the frigid chill of winter and a wave of inexorable strength that laid flat the shrubs and grass around them as a wall of black clouds bubbled up from the building covered horizon in every direction they looked. 

Francis had ducked into a doorway to get out of the sudden wind, the darkness, the crash of thunder and lightning that had sprung from nowhere. They had barely noticed the flyers stuck to the door and whipping in the wind as they tried the handle and found the door open. Only catching the troup and acting class and show advertisements arrayed in colourful pictures and block letters turning surreal in an eerie green glow from the corner of their eye as they leaned against the door to close it on the incoming storm.

**Author's Note:**

> The Tragedy of Francis, a comic puppet show in all acts. Act one. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
